Friday Five

The Excuse

None needed. W00t!

The Week

I found myself in Dallas this week (Irving to be specific). On more than one occasion this week I had to remind myself of where I was, which is just a weird feeling.

If you’re interested in the pictures from our vacation and didn’t see the links go up on Twitter, here they are:

Central Park
Citi Field (Mets)
Citizens Bank Park (Phillies)
Nationals Park (Nationals)
Capitol 4th

The Restaurant

For the first time ever I’m going to mention an airport restaurant - Le Grand Comptoir in Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport. This place just blew me away. I've obviously been to more than my fair share of airports and visited way more airport restaurants than condoned by the Geneva Convention, and as such I've been desensitized to the food that they usually serve in airports. This place is completely different.

First, it's got an awesome atmosphere. The place is wide open, high ceilings, and a great bar area and cute tables throughout (but yet not crowded into the space).

Second is the wine selection. They have about 10 reds and 10 whites available by the glass, and an amazingly extensive bottle selection. They also have a very good booze selection, although their beer list leaves something to be desired (but I'm not going to ding them for that as that's not what they're going for).

Third is their food - real food. I went with a roast beef sandwich which came on a baguette that tasted very fresh with cheddar cheese and horseradish mayo. it was served with a nice little weed salad and a very nice vinaigrette dressing. If I could pick one nit is that it would have been nice to have had a side of horseradish to go with it, but I'm not going to ding them a star for that.

I love this place and it deserves everyone one of those five stars that I gave it. The one thing I do question is their viability. The number of wines they have available by the glass pales in comparison to their bottle list, and I don't see that many travelers coming through and ordering a bottle of wine (maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see it). They also have a huge walk-in wine cooler that takes up quite a bit of real estate in a very expensive location (an airport). Don't get me wrong - I hope they succeed and I'm looking forward to stopping there every chance I can. I'm just not sure that they have a winning model.

The Exercise

Well – I actually managed to get down to the gym this week. Twice even. Although in my zeal I managed to get myself good and sore on Tuesday and haven’t been able to comfortably lift my arms above my head since.

The Five

Recently I’ve been running into more than my fair share of bratty kids, which leads me to a five (as suggested by Sarah) of the 5 reasons why I’m happy to have a dog and not a kid.

1. God has a sense of humor and He’d give me daughters. Sons would be easy – just build a padded room and let them beat on each other. Daughters? The cost of the dungeon and moat would be too expensive.
2. You can kennel a dog. Apparently CPS has a problem if you try to put a kid in a cage for a few hours.
3. Dogs belong on leashes, not kids.
4. We have a list of people about a mile long willing to watch Roscoe when we go on vacation. I can’t imagine that’d be the case if we had kids.
5. Dogs are just cool. Well, our dog is just cool.